The Traders of Genoa by Rudiger Dorn, is entry #6 in the prestigious Alea big box series of advanced strategy games--and their take on the trading game genre.
Players: 2-5
Playing Time: 2-4 hours
Complexity: 4 (of 10)
This game was simultaneously produced by Alea in German and Rio Grande Games in English.
The Components
The Traders of Genoa comes with a number of quality components:
- 1 game board
- wood bits
- 1 trader tower
- 1 turn marker
- 40 ware crates
- 35 owner markers
- 60 game cards
- 28 special tiles
- 80 bank notes
- 2 dice
- 1 rulebook
Game Board: The board is printed in attractive full color on linen-textured cardboard. It's four panels large and shows the center of Genoa. Along two of the edges of the map are two columns of buildings which are (cleverly) just included to place various tiles, markers, and cards upon. There's also a turn track to one side that shows when a game ends for 2, 3, 4, or 5 players.
The center of the board is taken up by an 8x8 grid, upon which sit various buildings. Each is clearly marked with its name and an icon which shows what commodity is gained there if an action is taken.
Overall the board is attractive and the icons make it easy to use. The inclusion of spaces for many of the bits on the board is a very nice touch that I wish was used by more of the Alea games (which tend to include sprawling masses of components, just like The Traders of Genoa does).
Wood Bits: All of the wood bits are made of quality, painted wood.
The trader tower is composed of 5 brown circular discs. (What the trader tower is supposed to actually represent, I have no idea, but we accept these abstractions in German games.)
The turn marker is a smaller circular disc, which is placed on the turn track.
The ware crates come in 8 colors for 8 different commodities. They're each a small wooden cube. These crates represent the only real problem with the components as two of the cubes ( the unpainted rice and the golden wheat) are so close in color as to cause confusion. These wares are also shown on the board and on various cards, and the colors as drawn don't really match the colors of the painted cubes.
Owner Markers: These hexagonal markers are printed on sturdy, though plain, cardstock. There are 7 in each of the 5 player colors: yellow, red, blue, green, and purple.
Game Cards: There are four types of game cards: Privileges, Messages, Small Orders, and Large Orders. Each is printed monochromatically on the back with a different color, which makes the decks pretty easy to separate. The fronts contain information on the specific card, usually including 1 or 2 locations and either 1 or 3 wares. Helpfully each card also shows its exact worth when completed. The Message cards are entirely clear; the two types of oOders are easy to use other than coloring issues; and the Privileges are confusing despite the card text until you figure out how they work (because the rules are confusing, I suspect).
The cards are all printed in the smaller German size on decent card stock with rounded corners.
Special Tiles: These are called "special cards" throughout the rules (and on other components) which is fairly confusing because they're clearly tiles, not cards. Each one is printed on thick cardboard in black and sepia. There are five types of special tiles, each of which gives a special power in the game. Each tile includes text for what it does and when it can be used, and they're all fairly intuitive as a result.
One of these special tiles is actually a "starting player" market, which exists solely to help you keep track of when to advance the turn marker.
Bank Notes: The notes are all printed in black on colored paper. They're pretty flimsy, and probably won't hold up well to repeated play. Each denomination, from 5 to 100 ducats is printed on a different colored paper.
There also aren't really enough of the lower denomination bills, and so you're forced to constantly trade in bills to keep the bank solvent.
Dice: The dice are octagonal 8-siders, to go with that 8x8 grid on the board. One's red, the other's blue, and they're both nicely marbelized and attractive.
Rulebook: The 12 page rulebook is printed on glossy, slightly flimsy, paper. It's full of examples and also has sidebars summarizing the rules, which is a feature throughout the Alea games which I adore. The rulebook was easy to read and learn from, but the organization left it slightly lacking for in-game reference (though the sidebars greatly helped).
Box and Tray: The box is a sturdy bookcase size. There's a 7-slot tray within which does a decent job of separating all the pieces, though it doesn't entirely feel like it was designed for this game.
Overall the components in The Traders of Genoa are of high though not amazing quality. As with most of the Alea games, I would have appreciated a bit more wood and a bit less cardboard, but still feel like I got my money's worth. It thus earns a Style rating of "4" out of "5".
The Game Play
The Traders of Genoa is a game of trading where you are forced to negotiate with other players in order to get value for your own actions and to gain valuable goods. In the end, through the delivery of Messages, Large Orders, and Small Orders, and through the acquisition of property and Privileges, you gain the ducats which will make you the top trader of Genoa.
Setup: You start out a game of The Traders of Genoa by laying out a bunch of components. The cards get shuffled and placed in four decks on the board. The wares are sorted out into four different locations. The owner markers are likewise laid out. Finally the five special tiles are placed to surround the board.
Each player starts the game with 130 ducats and one of each type of card: Privilege, Message, Small Order, and Large Order. Finally, a first player is selected.
The Goods: There are 18 different types of goods in The Traders of Genoa: 4 types of cards, 5 types of special tiles, 8 types of wares, and the owner markers. Likewise, the map contains 18 different buildings, and each of those buildings supplies one of more goods.
The correlation isn't exactly one-to-one: there are four Villas which supply Privilege cards; and four warehouses which each supply a pair of ware crates. Each of the other three card types is available from a specific building (you actually get two Messages from the Post Office and two Small Orders from the City Hall); and each of the five special tiles is available from a specific building, except for the Trade tile which is available at both the Tavern and the Restaurant. Finally, you can get a pair of ownership markers from the Cathedral.
Each of the 18 types of goods has a specific affect on the game, as follows:
Wares. These wooden squares are used to fulfill Small and Large orders. There are 8 types: salt, pepper, wheat, rice, linen, silk, silver, and copper. Each warehouse provides two wares (e.g., the Spices warehouse provides salt and pepper).
Owner Markers. These are used to claim ownership of buildings, as discussed below. When anyone takes an action in a building you own, you earn 10 ducats from the bank. In addition, you get 10 ducats at the end of the game for each building you own. They can also be used with the Building Action tile.
The four decks of cards generally earn you ducats in various ways:
Privilege Card. Related to a specific building. At the end of the game you earn additional ducats for each Privilege card, and more if the buildings are adjacent. For example, if you have three singular buildings you get 3x10 ducats. If you have two connected buildings and a singular, you get 30 + 10 ducats. If you have three connected buildings you get 60 ducats. The exact numbers are all laid out on the Privilege cards.
Message Card. Lists two buildings which must be visited in a single turn. If so, you earn 30 ducats by turning in the card.
Small Order Card. Lists a single ware which must be delivered to a specific location. If so, you earn 40 ducats when you take an action in the delivery location.
Large Order Card. Lists three wares which must be delivered to one of the four Villas. If so, you earn 100 ducats and a special tile when you take an action in the delivery location (but you don't get to collect a Privilege also, like you normally would in the Villa locations).
The special tiles let you do special things:
1:1 Trade Tile. Lets you trade one of a ware for one of a different ware.
1 of Any Ware Tile. Lets you take one of any ware from the bank.
Building Action Tile. Lets you take the action for any building you own (meaning that you get to collect whatever good is there, but not deliver any Orders).
One Further Action Tile. Lets you take a second action during a turn (more on that in a second).
Any Start Space Tile. Lets you choose where to start your turn (more on that in a second too).
Order of Play: Starting with the first player, each player takes the following actions for his turn:
- Place the Trader Tower
- Iterate through Actions
- Negotiate
- Take Actions
- Move Trade Tower
- Claim Ownership of Buildings
Every time a full round is played around the table, the turn marker is advanced by one. The game ends after a set number of rounds, determined by the number of players.
Place the Trader Tower: The active player starts off by rolling the two eight-sided dice. The grid is marked one to eight in red along one axis and blue on the other. Thus the die roll determines a starting space for the current player's turn. The active player then takes the Trader Tower, which is a pile of five round discs and places it in that location. If the rolled location was the market, a two-by-two location in the middle of the board, the turn marker is advanced by an additional one, shortening the game.
Alternatively the active player may play an "Any Start Space" marker to choose where he starts the Trader Tower.
Iterate through Actions: After choosing a starting location for the Trader Tower, the active player now enters the main part of his turn.
During the turn, the Trader Tower may either enter buildings or street spaces. The Trader Tower moves by the active player leaving one of the wooden discs behind and moving the rest of the discs into an orthagonally adjacent space; clearly, since there are only five discs, the Trader Tower can only visit five spaces during a player's turn. There's one additional restriction: the Trader Tower can't double back on its own path.
No actions are possible in the street, but within buildings players can take actions which provide them with various goods. However, there's one (crucial) catch: each player may only take one action each turn (unless they have a "One Further Action" special tile). Given that the Trader Tower can go to up to five spaces in a turn, this can be a bit wasteful for the active player ... unless he negotiates to let other players take the extra buildings' action.
Negotiating for a Current Location. If the Trader Tower is already in a space (because it started there or the active player decided to move there before negotiating), negotiations can begin immediately. Any player can offer cash and/or any of the 18 goods in exchange for the action of that building. They can offer things currently in their hand or the goods that they'll receive when taking the building's action. Offers can also involve the active player giving back goods (e.g., "I'll take the action in the post office, and give you both Messages, but you have to give me a Small Order and a crate of wheat in exchange.")
Once an offer is made for the current location, the active player must either take one of the offers (any, not necessarily the best) or else take the action himself (if he still can); he can't just leave an action untaken if there's at least one offer on the table, even if it's for a measly 5 ducats.
"We've already established it's worth 40."
"No, we've established you'll pay 40."
--Negotiation Intracacies
Taking an Action. Throughout a player's turn, various people will take actions in various buildings. This typically means that they gather the goods offered by that building--cards, wares, markers, or special tiles.
In order to deliver a Small Order you must take the action in the delivery building (though you get to collect whatever goods are there too).
In order to deliver a Large Order you must take the action in the delivery building, and you don't get the goods normally offered there.
Also, when an action is taken, the bank pays the owner of the building 10 ducats, if there is one.
Negotiating for a Future Location. After an action is taken in the current building (or it's determined that no one wants it), the active player then may move the Trader Tower, if he still has spaces left.
Before moving the Trader Tower, the active player may ask other players for bids on what space to move to. These work exactly like the negotiation described above, with one difference: the active player isn't forced to take one of the deals if he doesn't like them. This gives him some nice additional leverage, and thus a player will usually try and lock down a negotiation for a future space rather than moving to that space than opening up negotiation.
Once the player has selected an offer, he then must move the Trader Tower to the negotiated spot, which must be orthagonally adjacent to the old location. Then the winning negotiater automatically takes the action in that location.
If the player decides he doesn't like any offers, he can just move the Trader Tower to any legal location, possibly opening up a negotiation round for the now-current space. Or, he can decide his turn is done and that he doesn't want to move the Trader Tower any more.
Claim Ownership of Buildings: At the end of a player's turn, once the movement of the Tower is done, all players, starting with the active player, now get a chance to claim buildings.
Each player, in order, may choose to pick up one of the Trader Tower discs present on a street space, and then place owner markers in one or both of the adjacent buildings. If there is already a marker in a building, a player may expend an ownership marker to remove the other player's marker from the board, then place another ownership marker in that space.
These markers earn ducats both during the game and at the end of the game (and can be used with a Building Action tile).
Ending the Game: The game ends at the end of the turn after which the turn marker hit its last space. When this is exactly depends on the number of players in the game and how often the Trader Tower landed in the market.
Each player now gets 10 or more ducats for each Privilege card, depending on how many adjacent Privileges he has. (The cunning player would have traded to get adjacent Privileges.) Each player also gets 10 ducats for each building ownership marker he has still on the board.
He who has the most ducats, wins.
Relationship to Other Games
The Traders of Genoa is a bit of a rarity: a big-box trading board game. There are plenty of other board games that feature trading as an aspect, including: the seminal The Settlers of Catan and the war game Serenissima. However, there are few other longer board games that have trading as their core. Bean Trader, the board game influenced by Bohnanza, may be another, though I haven't played it yet. (Big-box auction games are much more common.)
You can make trades for three different things in The Traders of Genoa, spanning the types of trades found in most other games. First, there's the ever popular "set collection", wherein you can improve returns by getting adjacent sets of Privileges. Second, there's "formula matching", where you're trying to get wares required by certain orders. Third, you can trade for various in-game benefits, mostly marked by the special tiles. By combining these many aspects, Traders of Genoa ends up with a lot of depth, which is just what you need to stretch out a trading game over a longer time period.
The Game Design
Here's what works well about The Traders of Genoa:
Trading Well Designed: To start with, many trading goods have different values to different people, depending on what Orders and Privileges each person holds. Second, you have a ton of stuff to trade, so it feels like a real economy. Besides the goods themselves, moving the Trader Tower to a specific location can also have real value (based primarily upon Message locations or upon the desire to later claim ownership of buildings), and again that value will be different to different people. On top of all of this, the one-action limitation creates a real incentive to trade, somethign which is sometimes missing from other trading games.
Strategic Depth: There are a number of different possible paths to victory. You can try and collect sets of Privilege cards. Or, you can try and maintain ownership control of buildings, and also get "building action" tiles to let you make even better use of those locales. Or, you can try and fulfill lots of tiny Messages or Small Orders. Or, you can try and work through Large Orders. As with any good trading game, no one of these strategies is "best", because if one seems to be winning, the cost of those particular goods will slowly increase until a balance is reached.
Fun Bluffing Aspects: The Messages in particular allow for a fun bluffing aspect; if you can get a player to move the Trader Tower through a couple of locations, you'll automatically benefit, but of course you don't want your opponent to know that.
Here's some of my problems with the game:
Overly Analytical: Because there's so much known information on values of Orders and Messages, the game can get overly analytical, with players measuring exact potential returns versus offers made.
Redeeming Messages, Small Orders, Large Orders Confusing: There was a fair amount of confusion between how you redeem Messages, Small Orders, and Large Orders because they're all different. You don't need an action to redeem a Message; you need an action for a Small Order, buy you don't lose the action; and you need an action for a Large Order, and you lose the order. This will clear itself up over additional games, but it's a pretty awkward setup for first-time players.
Overall, The Traders of Genoa does an excellent job of extending core trading mechanics to a board-game-length game. It's well designed and remains interesting throughout, and thus earns an above-average "4" out of "5" for Substance.
Conclusion
If you like trading games, and would like something a bit longer than card games like Bohnanza or Res Publica, The Traders of Genoa is an excellent choice. It earns its place as one of Alea's well-respected Big Box games.
Review Summary